Great solution but far heavier than an adapter/dongle. That’s also another thing to carry with a large footprint in bags. I’d rather have the laptops not lose the damn useful ports, but they’ve learned to make extra money from people who need ports. Greed.

I'm surprised no one has come up with a thin dock that attaches to the side of the MacBook, flush with the computer that plugs into both ports to secure itself and allows for power, multiple USB ports and more, but doesn't have cables hanging out.

It amazes me how -by far- the biggest use of newer Gen ports like Thunderbolt on MacBooks is to emulate older ports. At what point when you're using Thunderbolt as USB! Ethernet! HDMI! Audio! that hey you know... it'd actually make more sense just to HAVE those ports rather than the new you only use to emulate them! But hey ... think different.